


We've all got Issues

by spectralspices



Category: Homestuck
Genre: CHARACTER STUDIES BY WAY OF SUPERHERO COMICS, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-03-10 01:23:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18928471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spectralspices/pseuds/spectralspices
Summary: Homestuck has a lot of characters with a lot of issues! Self perception, inaction, insecurity, all that. But you know who also has that? Superheros. This is something of an anthology sorta thing about Homestuck character studies by way of superheroes. Jade and Jean Gray, John and Superman, Terezi and Daredevil...it's all connected.Inspired by floralmarsupial!!





	1. ISSUE 1: Jade Harley and Jean Gray

Comic books weren’t something Jade expected to get into, especially on Earth C. But when Jake came to her with something he’d alchemited that had every comic Marvel or DC had ever published on it...well, dang, why not indulge her dancestor a little? Check out stuff he recommended? It’s not like she had much better to do, with all the Dave and Karkat stuff going on.

 

The first story she read was a spider-man one, on Jake’s advice. Spidey was...fun!! He was funny, he was as nice as he could be, and he stopped bad stuff from happening to good people. That was pretty much what a superhero was in her mind-all she really knew was Spider-man, Batman, and Superman. Apparently on Jake’s world there were a bunch of movies about the marvel guys? All she knew about was when John mentioned going to see Iron Man. But the important thing is-

In that story, Spider-man needed to help his friend, Curt Connors! He had tried to grow his arm back with lizard juice, but the lizard juice made him a big evil lizard man!! So after he KO’d the Lizard version, he needed to get help from another big science guy who knew about genetics, so he went to...a weird mansion called the Xavier mansion. And met-

“JAKE!! You didn’t tell me there were furries in comics!!”

He peered over her shoulder as she read the comics digitally on her iBark, a tablet shaped like a wolf howling at the moon. “Oh, righto! That’s Beast, from the X-men!” 

Jade found herself...extremely interested. Who was this weirdo...blue...fancy lion scientist? What possible permutation of events would lead to Big Furry Blue Science Lion? Jake kept talking, rambling about classic storylines, epic confrontations, battles beyond reckoning-until he mentioned one storyline. 

“-and the Dark Phoenix Saga, where Jean Gray is corrupted by the phoenix force and-”

“That sounds pretty interesting, where does that start?” 

Jade navigated to the start of the New X-Men, where all the (apparently?) iconic ones showed up. Storm! Wolverine! Colossus! Nightcrawler!! If we’re being honest, she was mostly in it for nightcrawler. Over the next few days, she read-learned about the characters, about Storm’s attic garden, about Colossus loving his friends and just being a big friendly russian, about Nightcrawler actually being like, super catholic? Which was fucked up??

But then she met Jean Gray.

The strongest of the X-men, an omega level telepath and telekinetic who spent most of the franchise…

Not doing anything. Being fought over. Argued over. Either she was spending her time being commanded, being captured, fawning over the man she was Supposed To Love, getting mind-controlled by a creep, or being evil because some new outside force was puppeteering her, being fought over by straight white guys that were apparently supposed to represent minorities?  _ That _ particular metaphor fell apart quickly, but…

Jade was looking at a mirror image of herself, crafted by men who probably didn’t realize that they were writing the character study of a teenage goddess who’d outlive all of them and also be half dog. Reading stories with Jean Gray left a pit in her stomach that felt oh-so-right to feed. So she kept going

Until the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga came.

 

Forced onto the...breathable part of the moon (what?) by some aliens as part of the trial for the  _ entire solar system _ she destroyed as Dark Phoenix, Jean and the rest of the X-men are fighting for their lives...until Jean realizes that she’s been letting the forces of the universe, of the... _ narrative, _ essentially, push her around for too long. She faces Scott Summers, a man who is literally only interesting when he’s having dick measuring contests with a knife fisted canadian dwarf or being morally repugnant, a man she is supposed to love because in the original team he was the leader and she was the girl….and she makes the only actual choice she’s ever gotten to make in her decades of existence as a character.

**She kills herself.**

 

Jade read this final part of the Phoenix story at 3:42 AM, her room dark, her heart sunken. She...couldn’t. She could  _ not _ let herself reach that point. She couldn't let herself be hung by the puppet strings anymore, at her limbs or at her throat. No more narrative. No more whims. Jade was going to make herself **happy**. Jade was going to go out and  _ pursue _ her happiness. By 4 AM, jade had shaved her hair (save for the dog ears, those stayed fuzzy) and had already messaged Karkat and Dave a long, long, LONG rant about...well, a thousand different things. But the core message was:

GG: i love you guys but grow the fuck up already and just start fucking DATING!!!! Im gonna go top vriska now!!

And so she did. And you know what? It felt  **GOOD** to make her own choices. To start cutting a path that wasn’t laid out for her by...fate, or whatever the fuck you call it. No narrator would tell her what she was doing anymore!! And I guess that means me. Onto the next story…

 

**NEXT ISSUE: John Egbert and Superman**  



	2. ISSUE 2: John Egbert and Superman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Note: Both John and Clark Kent are personal favourites of mine. Hope y'all enjoy it!

John wasn’t usually much of a superhero guy before Earth C. Ghost Rider was,  **_OBJECTIVELY_ ** , a masterpiece-but beyond that, he was pretty ambivalent. If the movie was cool, he’d probably watch it. But he was sor of...well, he hated to use this word…

He was sort of a normie? Batman was pretty cool, Superman was boring, all that. That changed. And it changed sort of hard.

 

Depression can do a lot to you. Make you lethargic, isolated,  _ sad _ (duh) and, unfortunately, uninterested in your usual stuff. Movies just reminded him of the old world. Video games were  _ not an option _ . The last one he played ended the fucking world and killed his dad. Okay,  _ technically _ the last one he played was Ghostbusters the MMO, but upon reflection, that was barely a fucking piece of software, let alone video game. So, on Jade’s recommendation, John grabbed that comic app that Jake had...alchemized? Or something? And he just started reading whatever caught his eye. Some X-Men (Jade thought he’d like Colossus-she was correct, he was a cool dude) some Daredevil (Wow, blind justice obsessed weirdos, where had he seen  _ that _ before?) and he found some Fantastic Four interesting on his own...but most of this was just flipping through stories without much interest. Time wasting.

Wasting.

Wasting.

Wasting.

All he’d done since the end of the game was waste. Time, Space, Life, Breath. No idea how he could waste the other aspects but he had the fuckin’ time to figure it out. He finished a run of The Authority, one of the darker takes on superheroes set in a universe apart from the main DC or Marvel stuff, and saw a recommendation from the app-

SUPERMAN: What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?

That was the silliest goddamn title he’d ever seen. Expecting an equally silly story as he clicked it, John just...was not prepared. The plot: Thinly Veiled parodies of the Authority called  _ The Elite _ (the veil is whisper-fucking thin here people) suddenly appear, killing criminals and making a good point: Superman lets a lot of horrific people just...get away. They go to prison, sure, but then they get out and kill more people. The argument is that Reality Sucks, and idealism doesn’t have a place in a world where shit sucks so bad. Okay, that’s much simpler, but this was the gateway story and one tends to simplify for things like this. So, simplicity.

Superman calls them out from their sky-sized bacteria ship from another universe, and the vaguely racist british telepath, the giant electric black man in broken chains, the woman with an alien symbiote entity bonded to her body, and the city controlling magical hat man emerge and Superman challenges them to a televised fight on part of the moon. 

But then they start to beat the  _ shit _ out of him. No holds barred, no stopping, just hurting and hurting and hurting-John started to re-evaluate how he viewed the Authority comics as he read the absolute, hateful violence being visited upon this symbol-this guy who just wants to help people with his special abilities. Just as it seemed like Superman had died in his own title, killed by people that were introduced in that very issue, John stopped for a moment.

 

Was he…

Was  _ HE _ Superman?

John stood from his bed, dropping his laptop down onto the soft surface. God fucking damnit. He was Superman, wasn’t he? Leader-On-Accident, messy semi-curly hair and a need to wear glasses, came to Earth on a flaming space projectile and found by the most regular human alive, whether that was a regular old farmer or your everyday accountant. And he ended up as a flying, super strong god-figure that fought against an evil mutated death-monster, an evil corporate murderer, and some freaky space skeleton. He had a long flowing piece of his outfit, most of his friends also had superpowers or were aliens,  _ he’d died and come back before _ -

No. This was all...all just some kind of paranoia. John Egbert steeled himself. He’d read more Superman. He’d only read one story and all he had was that and the general cultural osmosis he already had. First, to finish the story.

  
  


**6 HOURS, HUNDREDS OF COMICS, AND ONE FULLY FLEDGED MENTAL BREAKDOWN LATER**

 

okay so MAYBE he was like clark kent but superman was another matter, but where’s the distinction? is it the “mask” of the glasses? the shield? the cape? he hadn’t worn the godtier outfit in a while but he also hadn’t had to kill any chesspiece men or anything. was the difference that he killed? no because he only ever beat game constructs, everyone else he just sorta punched. was it that he was depressed and isolated? no! superman stories often had him isolated by his powers and the things he does on a regular basis! was it that…

Was it that he could say Fuck? Without a series of meaningless symbols like %^#@ to censor it? Was the difference that John Egbert could speak without filter? Without pretense? Was it that, even if he was this...archetype, this flat reflection of a real person, he was still realer than Superman? 

As the sun rose into the sky, John Egbert stumbled out onto the second floor landing that had once housed his Alchemiter about three universes ago, leaning on the railing. Superman and he were not the same man. They were...brothers. Not by blood or even by universal makeup...but in role. Sure, Superman could be “realer”. He could do to being written with a little more unique character and a little less proselytizing and moralizing. He could do with saying fuck sometimes. But on the other hand, John wished he could have his  _ drive _ , his  _ dedication _ , his...well, his moral compass. John knew he’d struggle with a choice like in that story with The Elite...but maybe that was just his Realness. He had layers of complexity and anxieties and issues that Superman didn’t need to deal with-he just DID things.

Maybe...he shouldn’t always have to deal with them too. Maybe sometimes, he could just go outside...enjoy the world he and his friends made. Talk to them more. Try to do some good with the power the universe gave to some little cow-lick havin’, glasses-needing weirdo who fell from the sky.

Okay, maybe Brothers wasn’t the best term. What was that thing Dave was always joking about? Kinning?

Yes, that was it. John was kinning Superman. This was the completely correct usage of the term and not at all a misunderstanding of the concept born of a sleep-deprived mind running on adrenaline and Superman comics. 

At all.

John slowly sat down and simply laid there, letting himself soak in the sun as his eyes grew heavy. First thing to just let himself enjoy; a day long nap. Then he'd go throw a big green car into a rock or something. 

 

**NEXT ISSUE: Terezi Pyrope and Daredevil**

 


	3. ISSUE 3: Terezi Pyrope and Daredevil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I feel like this one isn't quite up to snuff BUT it's 1:30 am and I wanted to get it DONE.

Oh, wonderful, everyone was getting into baby cartoons for little grubs from the human worlds. There were similar comics on Alternia, Terezi recalled. They were all written by Highbloods, glorified self inserts that murdered lowbloods, fucked all the time, were impossibly handsome and beautiful and so forth. They only ever sold to the lowbloods that didn’t want to get murdered by the highbloods that wrote and drew them-Terezi had actually practiced her law once by mediating an online screaming fest between two indigos who were accusing each other of plagiarism. She ended up convincing the two to fight to the death, then she and Vriska swept in and killed the winner because they were both fairly famous FLARPers too...good times. Fairly morally questionable times, perhaps even repugnantly violent times. Upon reflection, Terezi Pyrope had a lot fo be guilty of. Even on Earth C, even after bringing her dumbass out of whatever “Heroic 8ullshit new game plus” adventure she was on...that guilt never went away. The guilt of hurting her, of hurting others-ESPECIALLY the guilt of that timeline John told her about. Was it odd to be guilty about a person you never became? About crimes you never committed? No. Many people do that all the time. It’s called Paranoid Anxiety. Or something, probably. Not exactly her area of interest. What DID interest her was a certain character, for how…

 _Deliciously_ red he was. Out of all of them, this man was the _reddest_ of the _reds_. Spider-Man was out of the question (she’d start thinking about Vriska more and get guiltier), Iron Man was a bit too much like a highblood to enjoy (He’s so handsome and rich but he’s got a single weakness to make him Relatable and Three Dimensional. Blech.) And that Super-guy was just confusing. He was an alien, but also farmed? At least Daredevil was consistent!

 

As in, he consisted of three things: A deep knowledge of law and justice, a propensity for cane based physical violence, and **_UNENDING CATHOLIC GUILT_ ** . Had to google what “Catholic” was, but the whole...guilt thing tracked. Terezi, perhaps on accident, had gravitated towards “guy who was exactly like her but bright red and with sound instead of taste”. A character whose story was one of duty above feelings, of tragedy and death and the big G. Every good person’s death that he couldn’t prevent hung over Daredevil’s head, which drove him to fight more, and then he’d fuck up and someone else would die, and so on and so on. The only constants were his enemy, a cane-using mobster, and his friend and confident, a bumblefuck who just sort of existed to shout nonsense and occasionally words that have nuggets of truth. Mostly just said dumb things that were probably _objectively_ correct but he was dumb for saying them. Oh, and his on-again-off-again assassin girlfriend who often tried to murder him and who he had to fight way too much because they couldn’t just settle down and make out on a couch for God’s Sake. Terezi didn’t feel any...big urge to change from reading all this, or any overwhelming personal revelations, more just chuckling at the similarities.

 

Vriska probably wouldn’t like Elektra...which brought it back to what was driving her.

Guilt, Love, and faith in a higher power. For Matt Murdock, the guilt was plentiful, deserved or not-The love was for his violent girl, and the faith was in The Christman or whatever his name was.

For Terezi Pyrope, the guilt was just as plentiful, deserved or not-The love was for her SP1D3R81TCH, and the faith...well, the faith was going to be in herself.

Okay, maybe she had a big revelation, whatever. Not like anyone was gonna know. Terezi kicked off the chunk of debris she’d been reading, checking in with Pesterchum, and resting on. She was taking off further into the Medium to find Vriska...and she wasn’t stopping until she got her, slapped some sense into her, and hold her forever after that.

And also showed her the picture she drew of Vriska as spider-man falling down a flight of stairs marked B31NG 4 DUMB 1D1OT W1TH 4 H3RO COMPL3X into terezi’s waiting arms.

Fuckin’ owned.

 

**NEXT ISSUE: Jake English and The Hulk**


End file.
